Major tech companies set up new security group Confidential Computing Consortium

A number of major players in the tech and IT market have joined forces to improve safe computing. Alibaba, ARM, Baidu, Google Cloud, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Red Hat, Swisscom and Tencent are part of the group.

The collaboration takes place under the name Confidential Computing Consortium. The objective of the group, which operates under the banner of the Linux Foundation, is to accelerate the development of confidential computing. This is to protect data while it is being processed; in other words, to isolate sensitive data while it is in use. This is in contrast to protecting data when it is stored or when it is transported over networks. In this way, the group wants to prevent sensitive data from coming into contact with, for example, incorrect applications, an operating system or third parties in the cloud.

Tools for Trusted Execution Environments

Trusted Execution Enviroments (TEE), a way to create protected environments for applications, is one way to do this. The members of the consortium will promote the use of TEEs by coming up with open source tools that make it much easier to work with these protected environments. Regulations are also created and educational campaigns are run for clients of the group, as well as for developers.

Three tools have already been announced. With Microsoft Open Enclave SDK these TEE’s can be built. With Intel Software Guard Extensions it is also possible to create protected environments from the hardware. Furthermore, Red Hat Enarx gives developers the possibility to run applications in a TEE. These three projects will be available as open source under the flag of cooperation.

The tools have long been open source, reports ZDNet. The advantage, however, is probably that they will now come under the supervision of the consortium. This provides a common direction in which the tools will be developed, rather than separate objectives.